"Palais de Steff" has arrived and is a work in progress.
So come on in...grab a cocktail... or the nearest available houseboy and make yourself at home...feel free to wander about or just plonk yourself down and stay a while...
Princess says "Hello and Welcome"!...

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

As with most renovations and re decorating on an old house... for anyone else that has been there.... we have discovered a few surprises...

Some of the original plaster fittings and finishings have been water damaged by previous owners and just had a quick lick of paint slapped over them to hide the water marks...

Therefore we are needing to have the cornice and picture railing on one wall re moulded and replaced to match the original...And then there was the plaster air vent that just fell off the wall as the workman was attempting to ready it for painting...

Extra time and money...The plaster on the walls is the original "Horse Hair" none of the new fandangle dry wall...The colour of the lounge and hallway walls has been a peach/ apricot...On scraping back the paint that was flaking off everywhere due to being painted with "calcite" back in the 70's we discovered that the original colour was a pale green.

Unbeknownst to the Empress.... a very similar colour to the one that she has picked out for the re paint...The surround of the fireplace and mantle in the lounge has been extremely poorly finished, something that the Empress hadn't noticed on purchasing the house...

It's amazing what curtains can camouflage...The hallway has all the original fittings around the front door and even the window opener above the door... They are so old that they have been clagged up by the application of years and years of paint that they longer work... I'd like to get them restored...

Sadly... the budget won't stretch to full renovation of the mechanism but at least the new paint job will freshen things up and already the hall is a little brighter than it has been in the past...

The works continue... It will be another week before the replacement cornice and picture rail can be finished off but by then the bulk of the work should be completed

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

You may well have been wondering... "Where has that Prinny gotten to?"..

I've been wondering the same thing darlings and then I remembered that it was me that was meant to be writing the occasional post to keep you all informed of the goings on here at the Palais...

Well lets just say that things have been a little crazy since our seaside adventure.

Life of late has been a whirl-wind of calls back and forth to contractors, tradesmen, and all manner of workmen to arrange quotes for renovations and maintenance upgrades to the old Palais. At 160 years old the old girl is staring to look a little worse for wear.

Electrical rewiring, plumbing,New vanity in the bathroom, laundry trough and tap fittings, re tiling of the wet areas, re stumping and having the wonky bits in the floors stabilised, instillation of a new roller door on the garage, plastering and repainting of a couple of rooms and finally lifting carpet to have polished floorboards in the hallway and lounge room...

Not a lot of work to arrange at all!!

Then there is the hunting of samples for colours, finishes, and fittings.

The Empress is overstressed by it all as "she would like all the works to be completed by yesterday"...

Lets just say that patience is Not one of her virtues...

To make things worse the painter was due to start this week but managed to get ill and will be unavailable for a month.

So... it has been back on the merry-go-round of quotes and availability once again to find another painter.

On top of that there have been the usual rounds of visits to doctors and specialists with the Empress anywhere up to 3 appointments a week. The good news is that most of them no longer want to see her and have discharged her from their clinics as her health state has improved so much.

Last week was the first week in so long that i can't remember that we had NO Doctors to visit!

On top of this Nexus (Bendigo Youth Theatre) is in full swing again with this years production of

Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance"

So as you may well imagine I'm up to my ears in Pirate costumes and Policeman's uniforms. Fortunately this year I have a team of Mums helping out with costumes so my workload has reduced a little, but I still remain busy providing liaison and support and organisation along with creating the bulk of the pirate outfits.

I have had another well experienced lady join the costume team who has taken on the bulk of the policeman uniforms and the regular head costumier is back on deck and has really gone all out this year to manage the daughters frocks... which is a huge weight off my mind. Communication is happening and it is all going swimmingly so far...

The good thing about this years production is that we have a smaller cast (Under 60) and the bulk of which have only one costume for the entire show!

It has been nice not to feel so pressured in feeling that I've been left to do it all on my own...as in past years.

It's nice to have support for a change...

I will endeavour to take some shots of the new works around the "Palais" and the usual snaps of the occasional costume for your enjoyment...when time permits...